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Scanlon on the Metaphysics of Reasons Against Quietist Normative Realism Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies Tristram McPherson University of Minnesota Duluth [email protected] Note: This is the author’s penultimate manuscript of this paper (ms. of March 1, 2010). The final publication is available at www.springerlink.com. Abstract: Recently, some philosophers have suggested that a form of robust realism about ethics, or normativity more generally, does not face a significant explanatory burden in metaphysics. I call this view metaphysically quietist normative realism. This paper argues that while this view can appear to constitute an attractive alternative to more traditional forms of normative realism, it cannot deliver on this promise. I examine T. M. Scanlon’s attempt to defend such a quietist realism, and argue that rather than silencing metaphysical questions about normative reasons, his defense at best succeeds only in shifting the focus of metaphysical enquiry. I then set aside the details of Scanlon’s view, and argue on general grounds that that the quietist realist cannot finesse a crucial metanormative task: to explain the contrast between the correct normative system and alternative putatively normative standards. Keywords: metaethics, metanormative quietism, metanormative realism, normativity, reasons, Scanlon McPherson Against quietist normative realism MS 1 Introduction Philosophers interested in normative domains such as ethics or epistemology face a persistent challenge: to understand how our practices of normative judgment and discourse fit within our best general account of the world. I will call this the metanormative project.1 (Contrast the more familiar metaethical project, which addresses similar questions about specifically moral or practical norms.) Roughly, metanormative realists think that normative claims are made true by their correspondence to the normative facts.2 Metanormative realists appear to face a daunting metaphysical challenge, which can be partially characterized by noting three central desiderata for a metanormative theory. The first desideratum is to fit with our broader metaphysical commitments. The second is to permit us to explain how normative facts are epistemically accessible, as the non-skeptical realist presupposes them to be. The third is to permit us to explain the distinctive authority that we presume normative claims to have in our deliberation. Some philosophers have recently suggested that the appearance of such a challenge is illusory. They claim that while the realist is correct to take there to be normative facts, questions that might appear to require metaphysical answers can instead be addressed by substantive normative theorizing.3 They thus suggest a sort of metaphysically quietist normative realism. For brevity, I will call this view quietist realism. I begin this paper by distinguishing quietist realism from a series of other metanormative theories, and explaining why it appears to be a promising alternative (§1). I argue in the rest of the paper that quietist realism cannot deliver on this promise. I examine T. M. Scanlon’s attempt to defend quietist realism, and argue that rather than silencing metaphysical questions about normative reasons, his defense at best succeeds only in shifting the focus of our metaphysical enquiry (§2). I then set aside the details of Scanlon’s view, and argue that the quietist realist cannot finesse a crucial element of the third explanatory desideratum identified above. This is the demand to explain what underwrites the contrast between the correct normative system and other formally normative standards (§3). 1 I take the term ‘metanormative’ from Enoch 2007. Compare Hussain, 2004, 150-1 for a slightly different interpretation of the central project. 2 I oversimplify: one might (à la Quine) reject an ontology of facts on general grounds, but nonetheless remain a realist about some domains. I set aside this complication. 3 Besides Scanlon, who will be my central exemplar of this view in §2, philosophers who have made remarks that may be suggestive of such a view include Parfit “Appendix A: Normativity Naturalism, and Non-Cognitivism.” (Ms. of June 2008), Nagel 1997 Ch.6, and perhaps Dworkin 1996. Parfit’s views on these matters are still evolving, and the interpretation of Dworkin and Nagel in this respect is controversial. On Dworkin, compare Zangwill 1997 and Dworkin’s 1997 response. Svavarsdottir 2001 is an extremely helpful exploration of Nagel’s views on these topics. For an important related view, see Kramer 2009. McPherson Against quietist normative realism MS 2 1. Quietist realism distinguished and motivated Quietist realism is characterized by two claims. On the one hand, it is a form of realism, accepting that there are normative facts and properties. On the other, it suggests that accepting the existence of such facts and properties does not lead to the sort of explanatory burdens mentioned in the Introduction. Quietist realism of this sort is not typically discussed in the metaethical literature, so I will begin by distinguishing it from more familiar positions. First, standard versions of naturalist normative realism claim that there are normative facts and properties, and offer accounts of those facts as part of the natural order.4 Typically they do this either by proposing a reduction of normative properties to other natural properties, or by arguing that normative properties, while not reducible, are metaphysically continuous with other natural properties. Such naturalist views typically seek to explain how those facts satisfy the sorts of desiderata identified in the Introduction. One common complaint about such naturalist forms of realism is that, despite claims to the contrary, they fail to adequately explain the normative authority of ethical or epistemic facts, thus failing to satisfy the third desideratum.5 Recently, some normative realists have taken a deflationary tack, arguing against this desideratum by denying that normative authority is a coherent idea, if construed as being anything other than the characteristic of any standard against which one can make a mistake.6 Second, on standard expressivist views, normative attitudes are at the explanatorily fundamental level ‘desire-like’: their functional role is to have the world conform to their contents, rather than for their content to conform to the world.7 Leading expressivists about normative thought and discourse have recently allied their view with a minimalist account of truth and fact, according to which they can correctly claim that there are normative truths and facts.8 Such quasi-realist views contrast with normative realism, because according to the quasi-realist the philosophically fundamental explanation of the relevant talk of ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ is attitude-expressive rather than world-reflective.9 4 Leading examples of metanormative or more narrowly metaethical naturalist realists include Boyd 1997, Railton 1997, Smith 1994, Jackson and Pettit 1995, Schroeder 2007. 5 Complaints of this kind directed at specific naturalist accounts of ethics and epistemology are ubiquitous. Parfit’s “Appendix A: Normativity Naturalism, and Non-Cognitivism.” (Ms. of June 2008) offers an unusually strong general version of this charge against the naturalist. 6 This view is raised as a serious possibility by Copp 2004 and defended by Tiffany forthcoming. 7 Helpful discussions of the idea of direction of fit sketched here include Humberstone 1992 and Velleman 1992. 8 See for example Gibbard 2003, and especially Blackburn 1993. 9 It is not trivial to spell out this idea once one accepts minimalism. See Dreier 2005 for a helpful discussion. Quasi-realism should be distinguished from the sort of view that a normative realist might have if she found the expressivist treatment of the distinctive normativity of practical discourse compelling, and sought to graft that account onto a realist framework (for attempts at such grafting for different purposes, see Copp 2001 and Finlay 2005). Quietist realists show no signs of seeking to deploy such a strategy, so I set it aside here. McPherson Against quietist normative realism MS 3 Third, traditional non-naturalist realism about normativity insists that normativity is a sui generis property, distinct in kind from any of the fundamental properties that explain the non-normative nature of reality.10 Non-naturalists often claim that their view is the only one that can explain the robust normativity of ethics or epistemology. However, this view also faces serious challenges, most notably with respect to the first and second desiderata mentioned above. For example, it has been argued that dusting our ontology with brute normative properties is ontologically profligate, and that the non-naturalist cannot explain the apparent ‘ban on mixed worlds:’ the fact that we think that there are no ways that the world might be that are non-normative identical but normatively distinct.11 Finally, rather than seeking to address the desiderata on metanormative theories, as the above accounts each do, one might insist that the demand to do so is unreasonable given our epistemic capacities. Thus, one could claim that, while there are meaningful and substantive metaphysical questions about the nature of normativity, we are not capable of offering positive answers to those questions. This would be a kind of mysterianism about the nature of normativity.12 The mysterian idea runs counter to the explanatory aspirations that typically animate philosophical enquiry. Indeed, metanormative
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